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yeetsfromhellL2on Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)

>especially FOSS.

I just wanted to log in and point out that Free Software got started at MIT.

yeetsfromhellL2on Longitude found: the story of Harrison's clocks

My wife and I listened to that on a road trip and enjoyed it as well! The part that really sticks with me is how people were trying to drop weights off of the Tower of Pizza and use classical philosophy to figure out why the balls wanted to accelerate. Galileo pointed out that the reason why doesn't matter in experiments, it's the outcome that comes first and everything else follows. I was shocked that something like that was a huge breakthrough at the time.

As an aside, if you're ever in Florence, Italy, pay a visit to the Galileo museum. You'll get to see his desiccated fingers and a huge collection of medieval astronomical instruments that were as much art as science. Galileo's experimental devices looked a lot like things you'd see in a high school today, except made from beautiful wood and brass. It really blew me away.

yeetsfromhellL2on Longitude found: the story of Harrison's clocks

If you're interested in this, read Dava Sobel's book, "Longitude". Harrison was the archetype of the stubborn, self-educated genius that stuck to his ideas, fought the system for most of his life, and then changed the way the world worked. Seriously entertaining read. You'll walk away with an appreciation for timekeeping and knowing how to find your latitude and longitude with an accurate watch, a chart of times at high noon in Greenwich, and a few odds and ends (like a stick, a nail, and a clouded view of the sun).

yeetsfromhellL2on Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

I won't go into details but I'm dealing with a somewhat similar situation. If you love your family and want them to make decisions for you when you're incapacitated instead of strangers who will likely be trying to take advantage of the situation, GET AN ESTATE ATTORNEY. One at a large and respected firm with a solid track record. You will be making a minuscule investment compared to the cost of things going sideways. So much trouble for you and your family will be saved during an already difficult time.

yeetsfromhellL2on Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

Key word: ESTATE attorney. Preferably belonging to a large and well respected firm. Don't get just any attorney willing to do it, they won't be equipped for it and shit will go wrong, and things going wrong in the legal world is potentially catastrophic. For you, your family and anyone within a 1000 feet of you.

yeetsfromhellL2on Internet Archive joins opposition to the “SMART Copyright Act”

As a general rule of thumb, things like this are named to compensate for what they aren't. Look at the PATRIOT Act.

yeetsfromhellL2on GnuCash

https://www.gnu.org/software/software.html

It's a GNU project.

yeetsfromhellL2on GnuCash

I felt the same way trying to use ledger. Apparently there's a way to import your CC charges from online banking CSVs, but I never tried it out. I ended up giving myself a weekly allowance and plugging that into the books at the end of the week. Things got a lot easier when I was dealing with broad budget categories instead of logging transactions for a single cup of coffee.

yeetsfromhellL2on GnuCash

I'm surprised to see a GNU project that not only hosts their code on GitHub, but also has an official Facebook community. What gives?

yeetsfromhellL2on I've used all the notebooks

If you just do the date at each page header and timestamp each note to enable linking, your notes will get much easier to deal with. I actually started doing this because I'm fairly undisciplined and generally pretty disorganized.

yeetsfromhellL2on I've used all the notebooks

The author misses Rite in the Rain, which makes my favorite notebooks, they're printed with heavy, acid-free, waterproof paper. Pairs great with a Fisher pen cartridge (waterproof, pressurized ink made for writing in almost any condition).

As for dating, I like to do something a little different; it's still ISO8601 but with a slight twist. Each page top has the date in basic form (eg, 20220430) and each note on that page has a timestamp to describe that note and a title for the first line (eg: "T1234 Groceries"), followed by the note body below, a little like a git commit message. This allows me to link between notes by enclosing the date and time stamp in pointy brackets. To save some ink when linking, I use the date at the top of the page for context. If my page top is dated 20220430, and I want to link to a note from the 23rd at T0631, I write it like <23T0631>. Since the year and month are the same as the context I'm in, I don't bother writing those. I don't use page numbers at all.

Some other notebook habits I have: I like to use the first page for my contact info if anyone finds my notebook (and maybe offer a reward). The next page is for goals I'd like to work toward during the anticipated lifespan of that book. I also like to create a weekly index. When I've filled the notebook, I create an index of index pages on the very last page. If I wait to index the entire thing when the book is filled, I usually don't. Also, I use the last few pages to create monthly calendars. I fill in dates on them with letters (A, B, C...) for an event, which I reference on the back side of the page, either with a short description or a link to the timestamp I wrote down event information on. Finally, after filling a book, I write the range of timestamps that book covers in the spine so I can quickly find notes in the future.

yeetsfromhellL2on Manganese could be the secret behind truly mass-market EVs

>This kind of vehicle is meant to look big and imposing to project a certain image.

Actually modern trucks got so big to get around Obama-era fuel efficiency standards.

yeetsfromhellL2on Calling NSA to find your encryption key after a few bits were flipped (2010)

To protect against bit flips in car fly-by-wire systems, each signal is sent three times with the 2/3 majority making the decision. This happened after the runaway Prius fiasco that may have been caused by a gamma ray. Prior to that incident the fly-by-wire system only sent one signal.

yeetsfromhellL2on Everyone should learn the slide rule (2021)

I came in here to mention vernier calipers, I've gotten instant respect out of more than one machinist when I pulled them out instead of the digital calipers. They're fun to use too.

yeetsfromhellL2on It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

Fair enough, but I think I still would have used the Al wheels. They used known defective wheels, wrecked their project, didn't cross the finish line and potentially upset a big supporter. Not the kind of thing I'd do in a startup, at least.

Look at me though, judging people's decisions on the internet through a second hand story.

yeetsfromhellL2on Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

Well it very well could have if things went a little different. Bittorrent was revolutionary, but slow to adapt. Maybe if it was more user friendly, or had more browser integration earlier on, and the protocol had more development, you'd see it more widely used. Imagine if "the cloud" was just bittorrent swarms. It could have happened. As for blockchain...decentralized databases have their place, the problem is that centralized organizations are trying to make a use for them when a centralized db already did what they wanted just fine.

yeetsfromhellL2on It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

Jesus reading this thread makes me think I should go into the courier business.

yeetsfromhellL2on It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

If somebody pulls strings like that for you, you need to use the aluminum wheels.

yeetsfromhellL2on Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

I think it was made for publishing scientific research, and you could flag the options for what you wanted checked. If you were okay without the passive voice hints, you could still make whatever you were writing very direct and concise, or less wishy washy.

yeetsfromhellL2on A Tesla vehicle using ‘Smart Summon’ appears to crash into a $3.5mm private jet

Yeah but think of the wealth that could have trickled down to the middle class and eventually the lower class because of that jet ferrying the rich around to distribute their money as they see fit. Any conscious working class person would have thrown themselves in the way of that Tesla in the name of economic justice. The hospital bill would surely have been a crushing financial blow to him or her, and probably left them bankrupt, and also crippled, but what a boon to their class they would have preserved. Perhaps sympathetic workers could have donated to their cause, and to repair and clean the Tesla.

yeetsfromhellL2on The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

I did the same thing. I used to put a lot of effort into getting a perfect FLAC rip of everything I ever listened to, having them on my devices, or setting up streaming from a home server. I threw that shit out a long time ago, partly because I don't listen to the garbage that I used to, and partly because I've got better things to fuss over now. The amount of time worrying about file integrity, backups, server being up (and updated)...sorry, 90‰ of it is music I'll just get tired of soon. It wasn't worth it. Spotify makes more sense for me.

Same with movies. As I've gotten older, I can name about a dozen movies I'd like to watch again. I can afford to buy the next "highest quality release ever" when the time comes.

yeetsfromhellL2on Google’s AI-powered ‘inclusive warnings’ feature is very broken

Actually I've seen an English linter to help you maintain a passive voice for papers, remove waffle words and unnecessary fluff, etc. I'm not sure I can find the exact one I'm thinking of, but wasn't too bad overall, it spotted errors and made helpful suggestions. It was cool too, because it would read from stdin and integrated into vim pretty well with a few lines in my config.

yeetsfromhellL2on Venmo forces binding arbitration unless you opt out by mail before June 22

I can't for the life of me understand how you can sign away your rights like that in America. Binding arbitration? Who picks the arbiter, who pays them, and how do you appeal to a neutral third party? It's in an arbiter's best interests to side with their client, otherwise they get dropped. This is an obvious conflict of interest, but courts allow it partly because they're overburdened.

We in America really need to do something about our courts. Justice through the legal system is already out of reach for most Americans, even if they have the money and an open and closed case, it's likely they don't have the time to persue something which may take years (delaying tactics are a real thing).

yeetsfromhellL2on Senators want to mandate anti-piracy technology across the web

Once again, politicians are trying to fix something that isn't broken and are going to make a bigger mess than whatever it is they're trying to change.

This whole thing reminds me of Alice in Wonderland.

yeetsfromhellL2on The ‘psychobiome': the gut bacteria that may alter how you think, feel, act

I know a lot of people feel more comfortable coming out now which is a good thing, but to add some anecdata to this...I know, and have heard of, a large number of people who claim to be gay or bi and by every indication are not. Not that their sexuality is my concern, but a few of them are obviously just posturing or something. I don't know if they've attached virtue to certain sexualities, or maybe they need to feel like they're a minority so they aren't "oppressors" (they're all whites, of the concerned variety), or if they got invested in gay culture and feel like they belong to it, or if they fetishized it or whatever but it's weird. I literally had one woman tell me, who proclaims her bisexuality every chance she gets and paints her nails rainbow colors on pride day, say that sex with women was gross...sorry lady, but I don't think you're a bisexual...

Is there a word for this? It's like the label of something has taken on more importance in their minds than the meaning behind it.

yeetsfromhellL2on Shortwave radio: can you hear me now?

Thanks for the reply, I like hearing about some of the more novel radio stuff being done. Modern consumer electronics really did spoil people for understanding a lot of this stuff, it's a shame. I'd like to one day build some of this stuff myself from scratch, but I think the level of my technical ability right now would be a spark gap transmitter and a foxhole receiver, lol. As an aside, the stories of radio and amateur radio seems like a folklore of its own. It's not all written down, but you hear some interesting stories by word of mouth every once in a while.

yeetsfromhellL2on Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

Here I was expecting pages that look like a plain text file but are in fact a single png.

yeetsfromhellL2on That time Sony installed rootkit software on thousands of computers [video]

This woman was not guilty after doing this with special equipment, a telephoto lens(!).

There was also that guy in another case sitting in his kitchen naked while drinking coffee and reading the morning paper. Some woman decides to walk into his back yard with her kid, sees him, and called the police on him for indecency...it took years for him to get let off and cost him a ton of money to not get any penalties. He was nearly held liable for what someone saw inside his house when they had to be trespassing to see it!

yeetsfromhellL2on That time Sony installed rootkit software on thousands of computers [video]

The kid me was so enraged by that incident that I have still not bought a Sony product.

yeetsfromhellL2on That time Sony installed rootkit software on thousands of computers [video]

This is silly. It was a publicly accessible URL. A better analogy would be leaving your window blinds open and being upset that your neighbors can see you inside your home. Your neighbors aren't at fault, you are, and you can face criminal charges if you do something lewd inside your home while visible from public property. AT&T is completely at fault here for publicly distributing private info.